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We’re about to experience a phase transition in American activist politics. It’s a move from the “politics of articulation” to the “politics of opposition.” I’ve written about this before, both at this blog and in my first book. But those were sunnier times, and eons ago in internet time. So I want to use this blog post to reflect on three distinct movement dynamics that appear during periods of opposition and articulation.

The difference between opposition and articulation is fundamentally an agenda-setting issue. Major policy change in the United States is tremendously rare and difficult. Our system is designed to reward incremental changes to the status quo, and to punish big, new proposals. The party network that controls the White House generally gets to set the political agenda. When activist groups are part of that party network, they have to articulate a positive policy vision, and then mobilize the support necessary to overcome all the hurdles to a major bill becoming law. When activists groups are aligned against that party network, they merely have to oppose whatever the President is trying to accomplish.

As an example of these dynamics, consider the founding of the Tea Party. The first Tea Party protests convened around the moniker “Taxed Enough Already” (Get it?… TEA?). This was in spring 2009, just after Barack Obama had taken office. He had not passed, nor had he proposed, any major new taxes. The anti-tax revolt was not a response to new policies, it was a response to new politics. As soon as conservatives had a Democrat in the White House to rally against, they started rallying. Later, they settled on opposition to health care reform as their primary agenda item. The reason wasn’t because they had some deep commitment to the American system of insurance companies; it was because Obama had set the agenda, and they were going to oppose him.

The politics of articulation creates a lot of tension over what comes first. Michael Heaney and Fabio Rojas admirably demonstrate this point in their book, Party in the Street. The anti-war movement dissipated once Obama entered the White House. This wasn’t because people stopped dying in Iraq and Afghanistan! It was because activists who had been united in opposition to Bush’s foreign policy agenda turned attention to the myriad other issues that they cared about. The ability to help positively promote a policy agenda exposes fissures in activist values and priorities.

So what should we expect from, and how should we prepare for, moving back to the politics of articulation?

Rapid-response infrastructure is about to become a lot more valuable. Micah Sifry pointed out in The Big Disconnect that the internet is “better at saying stop than go.” Particularly during the early Obama years, this limitation seemed painfully clear. A senate supermajority and the makings of a mass digital movement still weren’t strong enough to overcome the combination of Mitch McConnell’s strategy and Joe Lieberman’s ego. During the Trump years, I expect we are going to find that the rapid-response infrastructure built to oppose Bush suddenly seems a lot more vibrant and viable. We aren’t starting this fight from scratch.

Intra-movement fissures are going to recede into the background. It’s no accident that the anti-globalization movement, and occupy wall street both emerged under democratic administrations. During the politics of opposition, we can confidently claim that the world would be made better if we just removed the current administration from power. During the politics of articulation, we are instead faced with the existential limits of our own party coalition’s ability to create the world we seek. This creates the conditions for heightened infighting around matters of policy and strategy. The agenda-setting dynamics also become tougher and more salient. It’s easy for labor and environmentalists to unite against regressive policy. Collaborating gets tougher when both are trying to articulate a vision and identify what types of compromises are unacceptable in the messy legislative process. Working through those tensions can be an important, generative process. It’s also painful and messy and no one particularly enjoys it. During the politics of opposition, we can expect these tensions to largely subside as we are all united against a common foe.

The loss of positive momentum. This last one is the kicker. Opposition politics is easier, and opposition politics is cleaner. We know how to stop terrible policy ideas much better than we know how to promote innovative, effective new solutions to living in this complex world. But the hope for making real, positive strides around income inequality, or civil rights, or climate destabilization, or a host of other progressive causes is now going to be put on hiatus. The clock is ticking on some of these issues (*cough* arcticseaice *cough*), and that is time that we will not get back. But that’s what happens when you lose-an-election-by-only getting-~1.5-million-more-votes-than-the-other-guy. We’re going to have to focus on stopping terrible things. The window of opportunity for promoting good ideas is effectively closed for the time being.

One final note: all of these points are premised upon the assumption that the Trump Administration will be fundamentally similar to previous Republican administrations. That is a premise that I actually have very little confidence in. We may very well be heading into a time period where activist opposition in American politics looks less like it did in 2002 America and more like it does in present-day less-democratic countries. The challenges and the stakes are much higher than they used to be. And while I still consider the distinction between opposition and articulation is useful to think with as we plan for 2017, I don’t want to leave any readers with the false sense that it will all be alright.

Alex Howard reported yesterday on the release of Democracy.io, a sleek new tool for emailing members of Congress. It’s a nice tool, built with the support of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, based on open datasets created by the Sunlight Foundation.

“Advocacy organizations that can afford it have long had access to tools for delivering bulk constituent messages, but those solutions are expensive and generally inaccessible for regular citizens. Democracy.io helps fill that gap by giving people an easy way to have their voices are heard in Washington.”

What’s the use-case here? Who are these “regular citizens” that want to share their thoughts and opinions with members of Congress unprompted by advocacy organizations? Where are they getting their information from, and what’s prompting them to write these digital letters?

Participating-because-we-were-asked is sometimes treated as non-“organic,” not as democratically healthy as spontaneous citizen participation that comes out of the civic ether. But let’s be real for a second: it takes a very particular type of person to walk through life believing that (1) they have all the answers, (2) Congress needs to hear those answers, and (3) writing an e-mail ought to do the trick. On season 1 of Parks and Rec, Leslie Knope referred to it as “people caring loudly at me.”

This isn’t to say that Democracy.io isn’t nice tech. It appears to be well-designed. Some future, nascent social movements might be able to deploy this tool on a mass scale, bypassing software vendors that they can’t afford. The codebase might be combined with something else to massively simplify some genuinely hard problems.

But, at least in its current form… I don’t get it. Citizen participation tends to be organized and mediated through networked advocacy groups. Those groups face a thousand different problems, some small, some big. How did simplifying the process for emailing congress out-of-the-blue rise to the top of the list?

A person whose exercise of religion has been substantially burdened, or is likely to be substantially burdened, by a violation of this chapter may assert the violation or impending violation as a claim or defense in a judicial or administrative proceeding, regardless of whether the state or any other governmental entity is a party to the proceeding.

This means that it will not only give heft to plaintiffs who seek to overturn state actions that substantially burden religion. It will also apply to civil actions between private citizens — including companies — giving a potential fig leaf defense to obviously noxious and discriminatory behavior.

The cliche example floating around is the bakeshop being forced to make a wedding cake for gay couples despite religious objections to the wedding itself. There are far, far more substantial issues in play than dessert, but even if we keep it at the level of the admittedly less-than-life-or-death, it’s easy to see the problems here.

While racial animus is less accepted today, it’s still sincerely held by many and religiously grounded for some. Just because that’s passé and anti-gay sentiment is still held by a substantial portion of the population, is the legal and moral question any different? Is the discriminatory potential — and, let’s be frank, intention — clear yet?

Imagine bakeries with “No Interracial Couples” signs in their windows, or even an implicit policy to that effect. Offended yet? Even though this might be motivated by sincere religious belief? Would you object to a law that tells the victims of such discrimination that state courts are likely closed to them?1)The obvious intent and far more likely outcome of this law is to gut local ordinances that provide LGBTQ protections. Yet it would at least re-open the question of racial and religious discrimination in the context of any applicable state laws. Religiously-motivated racial, ethnic, religious, and gender discrimination might be permitted by state law, at least in some contexts, and we wouldn’t know until the courts sorted it out. In less life-or-death contexts, such as refusing to bake a cake for a Jewish wedding, some judges might find the state interest to be insufficiently compelling. Do you want to tell that couple, “It’s federal court or bust.”? I sure don’t. My broader point, however, is obviously that this provides an analogy, bringing the battles of the mid-20th Century to bear on today’s civil rights battle. Good, that means you’re a decent human being.

Now, let’s get out of the bakeshop, because this will likely grant a hall pass for discrimination in far more serious contexts.

There is no federal protection for LGBTQ folks and no statewide protection in Indiana. Even in the towns where there are protections, however, this bill essentially guts those — a transparent intent behind the bill.

Thus, imagine hoteliers turning away LGBTQ couples. In the context of racial discrimination, this was decided 51 years ago, but it’s now an open question in Indiana.

Imagine realtors refusing to work with people whose lifestyles they find morally objectionable. Imagine bankers turning down loan applicants and even would-be account holders. Imagine teachers refusing to meet with parents in same-sex relationships.

All of these might now be legally sanctioned as long as they are motivated by religious (rather than secular) animus.

These acts of discrimination need not even be grounded in religious tenets that are central to one’s faith. The act clarifies:

Sec. 5. As used in this chapter, “exercise of religion” includes any exercise of religion, whether or not compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief.

Talk about a free pass. Any exercise of religion counts, even if it’s as transparently silly as a Pastafarian head covering — but, you know, used for discriminatory rather than parodic effect.

This means that, except where state or federal law provides otherwise, even the thinnest veneer of religious objection will excuse wanton, explicit discrimination. It also means that these religious fig leaves will also force a plaintiff and/or the state to re-establish how compelling the state interest is in all the laws that ban discrimination.

likely create confusion, conflict, and a wave of litigation that will threaten the clarity of religious liberty rights in Indiana while undermining the state’s ability to enforce other compelling interests. This confusion and conflict will increasingly take the form of private actors, such as employers, landlords, small business owners, or corporations, taking the law into their own hands and acting, in ways that violate generally applicable laws on the grounds that they have a religious justification for doing so. Members of the public will then be asked to bear the cost of their employer’s, their landlord’s, their local shopkeeper’s, or a police officer’s private religious beliefs.

In other words, this bill will wreak havoc on the legal order in the state of Indiana, and the stakes are heck of a lot bigger than wedding cakes.

Arkansas-based Walmart — which may make more money from both homophobes and from LGBTQ people than any other company in the country — has weighed in against that state’s bill. If it passes, though, I wonder if they’ll try to find a way to argue that their religion forbids collective bargaining.

The obvious intent and far more likely outcome of this law is to gut local ordinances that provide LGBTQ protections. Yet it would at least re-open the question of racial and religious discrimination in the context of any applicable state laws. Religiously-motivated racial, ethnic, religious, and gender discrimination might be permitted by state law, at least in some contexts, and we wouldn’t know until the courts sorted it out. In less life-or-death contexts, such as refusing to bake a cake for a Jewish wedding, some judges might find the state interest to be insufficiently compelling. Do you want to tell that couple, “It’s federal court or bust.”? I sure don’t. My broader point, however, is obviously that this provides an analogy, bringing the battles of the mid-20th Century to bear on today’s civil rights battle.

After all, roughly 92% of American children are getting their MMR vaccine. How do we deal with the other 8%? This matters to everyone because vaccines are not 100% effective, and infants and some other folks can’t get vaccines for health reasons.

1. Eliminate, or at least harden, non-medical exemptions for school students

This is good policy, and it should be adopted by the other 48 states. If your personal or religious beliefs are so strong that you insist on ignoring the advice of the collective, virtually unanimous opinion of medicine writ large, fine. You have to find another way to educate your children, at your own expense.

It’s getting some pushback from vaccine fear mongers, of course, but also from libertarian types. Here’s the thing, though: You don’t get to take advantage of a public service, provided at public expense, and then tell the body politic that some very reasonable conditions placed on that service are a violation of your individual liberty.

It’s against policy to smoke anywhere on a K-12 campus in most if not all states — including in North Carolina, for G-d’s sake — and this infringement of liberty has come about with broad if grudging acceptance even among the gravelly-voiced crowd.

If you believe in this extreme of a version of personal liberty, you’re probably a follower (at least indirectly) of Ayn Rand. So take that reasoning to its conclusion. Rand didn’t even think public schools should exist. Until we abolish public schools and live in an objectivist utopia, then, there are just some times — from vaccines to seat belts to food safety inspections — that your liberty to do things “your way” might be curtailed.

But, you might say: What about private schools? Won’t all these well-off anti-vax families just pony up to send their kids elsewhere? A number surely will. The state should therefore also make private schools publicize their vaccination policies, exemption rates, and number of confirmed cases of vaccine-preventable diseases per year for the last five years. They should have to share this, in writing, with all current students’ parents and with any potential new students’ families.

A number of softer-hearted souls have proposed merely hardening the rules on personal exemptions — making it harder for parents to get the forms, making them resubmit every year, making them complete online learning modules, and so on. This has been partially effective, but it does not go far enough in my view.

“Resisting vaccination isn’t a matter of laziness; it’s actually time-consuming and expensive,” writes Whet Moser. Which means the same kind of parent who clings to anti-vax believes is also the kind of parent who will do “anything” for their kid. (Except, you know, make the single easiest decision a parent can make.) Instead of daring these folks to jump through more hoops, just keep the kids out of public schools, period.

If you want to compromise on the religious exemption, that is more reasonable — or, at least, less subject to the whims of changing opinions. I would, however, add a mechanism for sniffing out sham churches set up for this purpose.

I don’t feel particularly compelled to give on even this point, however. We have all sorts of rules in public schools that might conflict with a sincerely held religious belief, from mixed-gender classrooms to not letting kids get out of biology class because they don’t believe in evolution. If parents want something different on these counts, they have to find a school that meets their beliefs, and putting vaccinations on this list is perfectly reasonable.

2. Medical Isolation

Many people are talking about school policy changes, but I’m also concerned about infection at the doctor’s office — where you’ll find a disproportionately large share of infants and immunity-compromised children.

Thus, I propose that all medical offices have to post their vaccination policies prominently, and those caught not sticking to theirs are subject to a serious fine.

Imagine walking into the office and seeing this:

Statement of Office Policy on Vaccinations

X

This office only accepts patients that are up to date on their vaccinations (barring medical exemptions), and we verify.

This office only accepts patients that are up to date on their vaccinations (barring medical exemptions), but we do not verify.

X

(If either of the above is checked) This office has after-hours "catch up" vaccinations.

This office accepts patients regardless of their vaccination status.

In today’s climate, that would be very reassuring to see. And if I make an appointment, show up, and instead it’s Box 4 that’s checked? My kid and I are going elsewhere.

If I discover this, I should leave, and I shouldn’t be forced to pay a cancellation fee. Such an office should also have to get written assent to this choice from all patients before they can bill for dollar one.

Box 2 would probably work well enough as long as patients/parents have to sign a statement, under penalty of perjury. Which brings up another important point: Verification would work best if states require that all immunizations be submitted to the state database. Vaccinating doctors are not required to submit this information in some states, such as (I’m very sorry to see) California, so it would be a good bit of extra work to be a Box 1 office.

I would probably be comfortable taking my child to a Box 2 medical office, but he’s 10, vaccinated, and healthy. If I had an infant or other especially vulnerable child, though, I’d really try to find a verified-immunization office.

It would be hard to find a doctor who’s willing to advertise to their patients that the unvaccinated are explicitly welcome in their office. Sure, even the occasional anti-vax quacks can be found, but it’s becoming hard to find doctors who will even see anti-vax parents. (Even without a mandate, if I were a doctor, I’d post a prominent “must be vaccinated” notice in my office, and I suspect we’ll start to see this soon in any case.)

So that’s my proposal: No public school without vaccinations or a valid medical excuse, and mandatory notice about medical office policies.

If you’re not vaccinating your children, you’re free-riding on herd immunity (to say nothing of harming your own child!), and the herd should try to limit the damage that your adorable little disease vector can do to the rest of us.

As with many others, I’ve been on an anti-anti-vax rampage on social media.

(I should perhaps rethink my strategy, but it’s not clear that there is a good strategy for dealing with someone once they’re in that camp. It’s not the first such example, either. How do you argue with a Scientologist? How do you convince congressional Republicans that we won’t eliminate the deficit without either raising taxes or seriously harming the economy? There aren’t a lot of good solutions here.)

Thus, one of my more libertarian friends (who gets all her kids’ shots, thank G-d, but who thinks you should use an alternative vaccination schedule that delays vaccinations) posted on my wall to ask if I would really support an infringement on individual liberty in the form of forcing folks to get vaccinated.

To which I say: Hell yes! I would support it, and it would even be constitutional. Which is not the same thing as supporting such a policy as politically pragmatic — but I have an answer for that, too.

As for my personal preference for whether we should force people to get vaccines against airborne pathogens — when they have been proven safe and effective, winning near-universal support among medical experts: Yes, I do want to live in that world.

I suppose I’d allow an exemption for truly anti-modern-culture isolationists who agree to keep away from broader society. (The Amish seem not to qualify on either count, by the way, with the majority getting vaccinated AND their willingness to participate in commerce with outsiders. Zippers no, shots mostly yes. Who knew?))

But in the general population — among those healthy enough to be vaccinated, of course — yes, I would support forcing folks to get their shots. If you’re not willing, I would gladly levy a stiff fine. (I mean, I’m not proposing that we lock unvaccinated families in a tent inside a hospital in Newark where they have to poop in a bucket or anything. That would be inhumane.) This would be especially effective if it had a high ceiling and explicit instructions to judges that it should be proportional to income — since, you know, being an anti-vaxxer seems primarily to be a disease of privilege.

The Supremes ruled on this over a century ago, by the way, in Jacobson v. Massachusetts. In 1905, the court ruled that Massachusetts was within its power to fine Jacobson five dollars (equivalent to roughly $130 today) for failing to get vaccinated, at zero cost to himself, against smallpox.

The Wikipedia article is mostly accurate — relative to my skim of the case (IANAL, as always) — but read some of what the Supremes have to say on the matter. Pretty convincing, and definitive, stuff:

… the liberty secured by the Constitution of the United States to every person within its jurisdiction does not import an absolute right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint. There are manifold restraints to which every person is necessarily subject for the common good. On any other basis organized society could not exist with safety to its members. Society based on the rule that each one is a law unto himself would soon be confronted with disorder and anarchy. Real liberty for all could not exist under the operation of a principle which recognizes the right of each individual person to use his own, whether in respect of his person or his property, regardless of the injury that may be done to others.1)Court footnote 7

Not a lot of wiggle room left there. Watch them apply it to this specific question:

Upon the principle of self-defense, of paramount necessity, a community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic of disease which threatens the safety of its members. It is to be observed that when the regulation in question was adopted smallpox, according to the recitals in the regulation adopted by the board of health, was prevalent to some extent in the city of Cambridge, and the disease was increasing. If such was the situation,—and nothing is asserted or appears in the record to the contrary,—if we are to attach, any value whatever to the knowledge which, it is safe to affirm, in common to all civilized peoples touching smallpox and the methods most usually employed to eradicate that disease, it cannot be adjudged that the present regulation of the board of health was not necessary in order to protect the public health and secure the public safety. …

If the mode adopted by the commonwealth of Massachusetts for the protection of its local communities against smallpox proved to be distressing, inconvenient, or objectionable to some,—if nothing more could be reasonably affirmed of the statute in question,—the answer is that it was the duty of the constituted authorities primarily to keep in view the welfare, comfort, and safety of the many, and not permit the interests of the many to be subordinated to the wishes or convenience of the few.2)Court footnote 8

The court goes on, at length, in a way that might make the Ayn Rand followers of the world a bit uncomfortable. I feel no obligation to assuage their feelings, however. If what you’re doing might harm or kill me, the state has a right to stop you from doing it — even if it’s something as banal as forcing restaurant employees to wash their hands. Ditto foolish self-harm, such as with seat belt and helmet laws.

The decision is also a fantastic read for some historical context on exactly how far back the consensus on vaccines really reaches. For instance:

[Jacobson’s arguments] in the main seem to have had no purpose except to state the general theory of those of the medical profession who attach little or no value to vaccination as a means of preventing the spread of smallpox, or who think that vaccination causes other diseases of the body. What everybody knows the court must know, and therefore the state court judicially knew, as this court knows, that an opposite theory accords with the common belief, and is maintained by high medical authority.3)Court footnote 10

It is therefore the law of the land that, when confronted with a deadly infectious disease that is reliably and safely vaccinated against, a state or municipality may affirmatively compel the populace to be immunized.

This has been the definitive law of the land for 110 years, and the medical consensus behind — and safety of — vaccines has only increased.

This decision is many times more remarkable because it is from an era (the start of the Lochner era — Jacobson was published just two months before Lochner v New York) where the Court had a much, much more restricted view of what the state is allowed to do under the Constitution. This is the same session when the court held it unconstitutional for a state to tell employers how many hours a worker could work, and yet it held mandatory inoculation against deadly disease to be fully constitutional and consistent with American values.

I agree on both counts — constitutionality and consistency with our values. This is doubly so when it comes to children. They’re not your property. If you starve them or assault them or psychologically torment them, the state can and should intervene.

On the affirmative side, you have to send them to school or educate them in some comparable way, period; the value of education is not up for debate. When parents won’t do what’s demonstrably in a child’s best interests, the state can intervene and — when the risk is serious — should seriously consider doing so.

Thankfully, there are less invasive policy choices that would likely lead to the same desirable outcome of a return to near-100% childhood vaccination. That is the subject of my next post.

The snowstorm, meanwhile, was the “biggest storm since Snowmaggedon in DC.” We got about 8″ of snow in my neighborhood. Classes were cancelled. The government closed down. My dog loved it (see below). But it didn’t live up to the multiple feet of snow that fell on DC back in 2010. It was just a really big snowstorm. Nothing to see here, move along.

Both the protest and the snowstorm were treated as “the largest [rare event] since [EPIC event].” That’s true, but the framing also detracts from thinking about their overall impact.

There were (at least) three important differences between the SOPA moment and The Day We Fight Back.

(1) SOPA was defense, The Day We Fight Back was offense. When the SOPA blackout happened, some awful legislation was imminent. The Day We Fight Back calls on Congress to support The USA Freedom Act and oppose the FISA Improvements Act. Neither of these bills are facing a vote right now. It is a lot harder to galvanize a public to stop something bad than it is to support something good.

(2) SOPA was a direct threat to major Internet companies. NSA surveillance is an indirect threat. The Stop Online Piracy Act was a threat to Google and Wikipedia themselves. It was a power-play by Hollywood to turn the Internet into a giant copyright-enforcement engine. Organizing against SOPA didn’t happen overnight either. But one reason why TechCrunch’s side-by-side photos showed more participation from big websites during the SOPA blackout was because those websites had more directly at stake.

The point here is that, like judging every big snowstorm against Snowpocalypse (or every hurricane against Katrina), judging a massive day of action against the SOPA blackout will obscure the impact of the action itself.

—

The Day We Fight Back wasn’t supposed to be as large as the SOPA Blackout. And even if it had been, it wouldn’t have had the same direct impact, because getting Congress to pass a proposed law doesn’t happen as fast as getting Congress to abandon a proposed law. The Day We Fight Back was part of a longer campaign. It yielded mass attention, and increased cohesion within a gigantic, cross-partisan coalition, and it built a list of committed supporters who can be contacted for future actions.

And that’s the real point about online petitions. Sure, they can be “the very least you can do without doing nothing.” But they can also be a damn good initial entry point into the broader campaign. 555,000 people took action through their system on Tuesday. That’s 555,000 people who have signaled their interest and can be re-engaged for later actions.

Active issue publics don’t appear overnight. They don’t rove the digital terrain, waiting to ride in and save the day. They are built through time, action, and effort.

The real question to ask about The Day We Fight Back isn’t “how does it compare to the SOPA blackout.” The real question to ask is “so, what’s next?”

In the majority of media coverage about the shutdown and debt ceiling, the press has bent over backward to imply that there is plenty of blame to go around. This is false equivalency of the highest order, and I’m here to correct the record.

The number one threat to the US and world economy is congressional Republicans and, by implication, the reactionary extremist voters who put them in power. They’re about to blow up the financial system in vengeance because they lost the presidential election — and this largely over a policy first implemented by their own presidential candidate.

And don’t say, “What about the debt?” If they were serious about that, they’d try to keep interest rates low and GDP high. (They’d also take seriously the idea of more revenue…) If we default, though, interest rates will skyrocket and GDP will crater. (That’s not just my opinion, btw; follow the link to see the stark terms used by Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics.) Think “rates on my credit card” (instead of the near-zero rates we enjoy now) and “next Great Depression”. That’s a helluva debt trap (expenses way up, income way down) to try to claw our way back out of.

Even the credible threat to default has short term rates rising and people nervous to make long term investments. Would you buy US Treasury bonds right now? Would you open or expand a business right now (or even during the negotiations, assuming a bill passes)? (Zandi estimates the current standoff has already cut $20 billion off GDP.) If I had money to move, it’d be leaving the US economy post haste.

This isn’t “Let’s compromise because everyone has some valuable ideas” time. This is “Either you jerks come to your senses, or you’ll drive our government and economy off a cliff.” And I don’t have a lot of faith in the former.

I really hope Obama is willing to declare unilateral executive power to continue borrowing if it comes to that. The alternative starts to look like an even more extreme, self-inflicted version of the Greek collapse. But with way more guns. What could go wrong?

If there’s anything that pretty much everyone should agree on in light of the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin story, it’s that the story shows how deeply divided we remain as a country.

At least as reflected by posts on Facebook, 100% of my liberal intelligentsia friends are outraged that Martin is dead and Zimmerman is free, and the debates between us (to the extent that there have been any) have been about which people in the criminal justice system get which share of the blame.

Along with outrage, ethnic minorities and African Americans in particular also express a collective hurt and fear that I will never truly understand.

Yet others (here is where I’m grateful that not all of my friends and family are in the liberal intelligentsia) are miffed at the race-focused attention by the media and the political push to make the case into a symbol of broader issues. While I needn’t say it, let’s be explicit about the fact that nearly 100% of these folks are white. (I’m not Facebook friends with Clarence Thomas, and even if I were, I wonder if he posts more than once every seven years.)

While not all of these white, “Why the fuss?” crowd would admit it if probed, I think a good bit of this discomfort with the attention paid to the Zimmerman/Martin case comes from the implicit finger being pointed at them. If blacks are held down in schools, the job market, and the criminal justice system, surely somebody’s doing the holding. If minorities have unfair disadvantages, then the surplus unfair advantage is going to white people. If the system is racist, and you believe in the system, doesn’t that make you racist?

The good news is that the failure to be outraged over Trayvon’s death doesn’t make one a bigot, but the bad news is that this is because the answer is way more complicated than that. I hope to reassure my white, politically centrist or right-of-center friends that I’m not calling them racist or bigoted. Yet there are little things that we all do — you and me, blacks and whites, powerful and disempowered — that play into an incredibly intricate system of racial inequality.

This happens at every step of the criminal justice system, from police investigation through trial. As the Times notes:

A 2005 study by the Justice Department found that while Hispanic, black and white drivers were stopped by the police about as often, Hispanic drivers or their vehicles were searched 11.4 percent of the time and blacks 10.2 percent of the time, compared with 3.5 percent for white drivers. Data collected from state courts by the Justice Department also shows that a higher percentage of black felons than white felons receive prison sentences for nearly all offenses, and also that blacks receive longer maximum sentences for most offenses.

Even in murder trials where defendants claim self defense, race is a major factor. See this graphic.

Versus the baseline of white-on-white violence, black defendants are far less likely to be found to have acted in self-defense, and it’s many times again less likely when the victim is white. In contrast, white defendants are many times more likely to be found to have acted in self-defense when the victim is black.

That’s institutional racism.

Yet it goes farther. Many of the white “Why the fuss?” crowd might even acknowledge the racial bias in the courts (though too few are familiar with the staggering specifics), but they object to all the political outrage over Trayvon and wonder where the sympathy and coverage are for white crime victims, especially when the accused perpetrators are black.

It turns out, though, that the news media are also afflicted with institutional racism. This goes well beyond the genuine hacks like Bill O’Reilly. Rather, it’s the whole system — the one largely staffed by left-of-center reporters and editors.

In the aftermath of a major story about a black victim, killed by a white shooter, we’re hearing a good bit of “Why the fuss?” and “Where’s the attention to white victims and/or black perpetrators?” With no disrespect to any victim, whites have nothing to worry about when it comes to folks who look like them being shown on the news as victims of serious crimes. No news outlet can cover every story, but over time, white victims and black perpetrators have been and certainly will continue to be overrepresented.

On this count, Martin and Zimmerman are symbols for the broader problem of institutional racism in this country. Nobody needs to be energetically or even consciously racist for the major racial disparities we see to continue. Continuing racial inequity doesn’t need the next George Wallace; Michael Bloomberg will do just fine.

If you’re on the happy side of these inequalities, I think you should at least be honest with yourself and the world about the thousands of little ways in which your life is that much easier because of it. This isn’t to diminish the countless things you’ve undoubtedly done right, the hard work you’ve done, the substantial degree to which you’ve earned your place.

As white Americans, though, let’s at least all agree to be honest with ourselves and each other that we get at least a small leg up in pretty much every institution in society with which we deal.

That every right decision is likely to get us just a bit farther along than it would for an African American.

That we have at least a bit more room to make mistakes before being fired, evicted, jailed — or killed.

That the few places where we don’t have every advantage clearly pointed in our direction (college admissions and scholarships come to mind) are the exception and, regardless of what one thinks of them as policies, will never outweigh the much larger forces that cut the other direction.

That, yes, there are a few rich blacks and many poor whites, and class inequality is also a major issue that needs to be addressed — but that this doesn’t disprove any of the above.

Then, please join me in a quest to fight those disparities, one institution at a time. Not by making life harder for whites, of course, but by extending the same understanding, opportunities, and benefit of the doubt to all.

There was an interesting article in Politico yesterday, titled [gulp] “Honey, I shrunk the Obama data machine.”* The article discusses next steps for the Democratic data machine in the leadup to the 2013 and 2014 elections. The big question: can the Obama analytics tools translate to the state and congressional levels?

The answer (to paraphrase): “yes, but only some of them.”

When people talk about the #Demdata advantage in campaigns, they’re really talking about (at least) three distinct phenomena. Two translate well to smaller campaigns, the third doesn’t. The dividing line is something that I call the analytics floor.

(1) One of the biggest advantages Democrats hold over Republicans is the rich voter file that Democrats have developed. Republicans are working to build their own national database, to sometimes-comedic ends. That voter file can be exported to congressional campaigns, special elections, governor’s races, etc. OFA alumni like Dan Wagner of Civis Analytics specialize in just this sort of data modeling. Obama invested millions in developing the voter file and built a network of hundreds of experts in combining the voter file with polling data to produce much clearer maps of the electorate. As those experts turn to consulting and expand their reach outward, the price of these services will become more affordable over time.

(2) A second advantage comes in the form of lessons learned through persuasion and turnout experiments. The Analyst Institute was very busy during the 2012 election cycle, running tests to determine what sort of techniques and appeals can best sway undecided voters and motivate disinterested supporters. These lessons in political behavior are transportable from one election to another — if they’ve determined that voter “report cards” drive people to the polls, that’s a lesson that can improve off-year elections as well. Democrats have invested in cutting-edge social science, and are in no rush to share their findings with Republican competitors. This advantage will echo into 2014 and beyond.

(3) The third facet of #DemData is what Daniel Kreiss calls “computational management.” Computational management refers to the day-to-day role that analytics can play in campaign management, and the “culture of testing” it promotes. The Obama campaign tested everything. It tested e-mail subject lines. It tested font sizes. It tested niche television spots. Data settled arguments and maximized investments. Here’s where things get dicey.

Day-to-day inputs aren’t going to be available and/or useful to smaller campaigns the way they were to the Obama campaign. If you’re running a mayoral race in Hartford, there will be one or two polls conducted *at most*, and they’ll probably come from a relatively unknown firm. That’s exponentially less data than the Obama “cave” was working with. If you’re running a Rockville City Council race, there may be no polling available. And the number of people visiting your website/receiving your emails/reading your tweets is so small that you can’t run tests to find out which messages/frames/asks are most effective. You need scale for computational management. The analytics floor is the dividing line between large-scale and small-scale.

Computational management is a solution to large-scale problems, though. Honestly, running for city council just isn’t that complicated. Talk to your neighbors, earn the endorsements of community leaders, place a table at community events. The districts are small enough that you will mostly be relying upon personalized political communication anyway. The Hartford mayoral race is a bit more complicated, so data and modeling play a modest role. Think of that as a rule: as we increase the size of the electorate, the power of the office, and the (resultant) money being spent on the election, the size and complexity of the campaign apparatus increases as well.

The Obama campaign’s biggest managerial innovation was using multiple forms of data to improve decision-making in this complex environment. Analytics is a solution to the problems introduced at massive scale. Below the analytics floor, the tools are less useful, but they’re also less necessary.